The Maiden and The Magician
by Susanae
Summary: short story with theme for Love Potion


CHAPTER ONE  
  
Boycotted Finals  
The skies over Hogwarts roiled in thunder and lightening striking the northeast tower in ominous precision to the quarters of Professor Severus Snape. The Potions Masters' eyes popped open, startled instantly awake as the wild, raw electricity snuck through a window and vaporized his slippers not two feet from his bed. He had been sleeping like a vampire in his massive black mahogany, 4 postered canopied bed, his hands folded neatly over his chest - exactly where he put them 6 hours previous, if he had been breathing one couldn't tell.   
After blinking once he sat up and with a flick of his fingers the silken indigo covers folded back precisely off his black pajama clad body. He stood up and promptly his bed made itself including the pillow puffing itself up and wiggling to the center. A glare at the window made it fend off another bolt successfully.   
He yawned and stretched mightily for a few seconds before he yanked the yawn off his face and threw it on the floor. His sleepy self melted down into the cold marble tile. In bare feet he crossed over it to the wall where a picture hung, a man fishing on the ocean. He spoke his secret word then disappeared through the wall, which was the door to his privy.  
Exactly 2 minutes later he stepped out again fully dressed. He wore his usual.. a black high button down vest over a black shirt, with black trousers, black socks, black shoes and his long black robe. He left off any white today in the collar or cuffs.. grimly he wasn't in the mood, it was to be a long difficult day and he had no desire to be stylish. White/ black was stylish.. that wasn't him.  
Maybe what was him was his thick black hair that needed something if not first to be combed or better yet.. washed. It hung over his left cheek like a greasy wall and was flipped out behind the other ear in poky clumps. If he had a mirror he might have known but Severus Snape owned no such thing, he didn't use mirrors, he didn't wish to look in them.  
He went to the wall where a chest of drawers were hiding and got things out of it putting them in his pockets He miniaturized dozens of things... things like a ring a foot wide and loaded with a mass of keys and too, bottles and bags of ingredients for potions he took out from a shelf. Finished with this he left the bedroom and walked through another picture to his parlor, a beach at sunrise.   
Professor Snape's quarters consisted of 3 rooms, the parlor, the bedchamber and the bathroom. His decorating, if you could call it that included the color black. He lightened it up slightly with some fire. His parlor to which he had no guests in the 27 years he worked at Hogwarts was a 20x20 round room with half of it hearth and hanging cauldrons, the other half taken up with shelves of books and his most private collection of curious artifacts such as a miniaturized - deep sea in a bottle and a glowing crystal imbedded in a tree limb of amber. Before this wall a beastie chair sat in the current form of a black wolf. A dragon candelabra held by a spidery thread of unicorn hair floated over this seemingly living and breathing chair their mouths flaming out bright flames casting flickering shadows in the room. He went to sit at one of the severe looking and ebony ladder back chairs next to a 2x2 square matching table located at the beginning of the hearth wall and on the other side from the door size painting. The boat had become a tiny flicker on the high sea waves, the sky darkening towards a thunderstorm.   
With a snap of his fingers a blazing fire roared up in the hearth and with another snap a teapot sat steaming a brew over it. It came and poured him his cup - a pewter mug with obscure symbols carved in it which had appeared in his hand at the same time. It was his own special blend.. aside from tasting terrible it warded off favoritism towards students... he had to hate them all objectively as this was FINALS DAY, 1st thru 7th, end of term and year.  
Now in all things Professor Snape was exact. Being the Potions Master he of course needed to be but it went far beyond simple correctness, it was you could say.. his gift, and his pride and his obsession. He was quite perfect... and if his hair looked the way it did.. it was because it was exactly the way he wanted it to look, the man was everything he was, or was not quite deliberately and for reasons that no one would ever know or even want to know.  
He was thinking he didn't have a headache yet but maybe he should try to get one before he started out to the office when the flames of the fire surged and Albus Dumbledores' face appeared.  
"May I speak to you Severus?" he asked.   
  
"Certainly Headmaster, come in." he replied surprised.  
Dumbledore stepped out of the fire into his room. Professor Snape had stood up folding his hands together. Since Headmaster Dumbledore NEVER made personal visits to him he was instantly suspicious. Whatever was the meaning of the intrusion? "Sit down, would you care for some tea?"  
"Thank-you, thank-you," Dumbledore said looking at the uncomfortable chair being offered and smiling.  
Snape clicked his fingers in a short pattern and another steaming cup appeared on the table. "A breakfast blend.. I think you'll like it," he told him returning to his own seat.  
"Like, yes that's an important thing isn't it?" He sipped the tea and nodded, "Very nice Severus."  
"Thank-you," he said stiffly adding the comment, "I am very good at what I do."  
"Yes, oh yes I agree, you are superior in all your concoctions, quite gifted actually, why Hogwarts hired you in the first place."  
Snapes eyes glittered defensively, "Is that why you are here, to praise my gifts?"  
Dumbledore sighed a little and took another sip of his fragrant tea. He had to think about what he was going to say next. In answer he took out a folded paper from his thick purple robe. It unfolded itself until it grew to perhaps 9 feet long. On it was signatures.. students, name after name after name. "I am sorry Severus that I must bring this unfortunate petition to your attention."   
"What are you talking about?" Severus replied coolly sitting a bit straighter in his chair and lowering his chin a fraction.  
Dumbledore smiled, "Why I wished to see you before breakfast and before the start of your final examinations with your classes today." He looked deeply into Snapes eyes searching for something he didn't find so he continued, "These names are students who are boycotting attendance to your final exams, not the exams themselves Severus, just you administering them."  
Severus Snape looked down his long long nose at the 9 foot list, "Every student I HAVE?",  
he asked with incredulity.  
"No, not all, some are too afraid of you to sign this which is the reason they are boycotting in the first place... fear. It says at the top here, "DOES DELIBERATELY CAUSE FAILURE OF GOOD STUDENTS BY INTIMIDATING, BULLYING, AND THREATS CAUSING UNCONTROLLED FEAR AND TREMBLING AND THE CONSTANT CRYING OF GIRLS. HE BREATHS DOWN NECKS AND SWOOPS AROUND LIKE A BAT, HE MAKES IT IMPOSSIBLE TO THINK STRAIGHT AND IS AS DANGEROUS AS HE IS UGLY."  
"I see." Snapes said lifting an eyebrow of interest. "Who wrote that.. exactly who wrote that statement, which student?"  
"It says anonymous. But is this true? Are you wanting to make the girls cry? Constantly?"  
Severus looked down into his cup and seeing his reflection there quickly looked away.  
"Are you going to allow this outrageous and childish insubordination of these students?" he said sullenly not quite meeting Dumbledores' eye.  
"I have to find out what we are going to do here my dear friend.. we," he paused gently, "I certainly accept idiosynchricies here at Hogwarts, my goodness we're wizards that's to be expected, admired. I have no problem with your ah.. severity's, but I have had so many complaints now I don't know what to do, and now this. They are quite serious you know... this boycott."  
Severus said nothing but looked into the fire with his palm in his chin. After a few moments Albus continued.  
"Perhaps it's time to talk about the mirror." he said pleasantly.  
"What mirror?"  
"The Mirror of Erised. Senior year correct?"  
"That mirror. You know?"  
"I know you looked into it, I know you suffered a great harm due to it."  
Severus cleared his throat ruefully, "It means nothing now."  
"Perhaps it will always have meaning, we are formed by our past are we not?"  
Severus shrugged his shoulders, "I found it like any student might and looked into it one time. I knew nothing of it except rumor." He cleared his throat and met his friends eye, " What I saw was the girl I .. I was most fond of. She showed her love for me in it and I wanted to believed it." He took a sip of his awful tea and shook his head.  
"And?"  
"I wrote her a letter with my feelings which I had not yet given her. Instead as you well know, it was stolen out of my books and reproduced and plastered from one end of Hogwarts to the other the DAY of our graduation. Oh wasn't I the fool? The mirror shows nothing but the hearts desire of the looker. She loved someone else, and married him too. I remember seeing her read it on the wall, she turned to me with oh so sincere tears in her eyes for my shall we say ..humiliation?, "I'm sorry.. so sorry Severus." she said to me. My my, I had chosen to forget it Albus, now you've made me remember, how bitter and pointless, but I now have a pounding headache.. how splendid." He smiled wickedly.  
"It's time to forgive yourself this mistake, perhaps if you were to heal you might not dislike girls, women, bitterness isn't good for your soul, or sour grapes Severus, it may be part of this persona you have developed, the one they all seem to fear." Albus reached over and patted his arm in a fatherly fashion.  
"Are you relieving me of my duties?, are you judging me now?" Severus finished his tea and threw the cup into the fire where it dissapeared obediently amidst the violent flames.  
"No! no, not at all. But we do need to come up with a solution to your unhappiness in teaching don't we?"  
"I am not the least bit.." he paused not wanting to choose unhappy, "swayed by this ridiculous boycott, I will simply fail them all, as for unhappiness for the teaching Profession I ... deny this., I deny that my past has any bearing on my present for my teaching methods, or persona! You're quite mistaken!"  
"Then explain."  
"I wouldn't intimidate them if they had the knowledge they are supposed to have, I wouldn't frighten them if they had a lick of confidence. They are foolish, they constantly break the rules, and they lie, then they cheat, then they whine about failing."  
"And the girls?"  
"Which one? The one that quilled that petition?"  
"Truly Severus, there is no name on it except the signatures."  
"I would recognize Sasha Manasha's flourish and scribble handwriting anywhere, why don't you just read me the rest of it."  
Dumbledore didn't want to but did anyway. "There is a further note at the bottom," he told him trying not to read it with the obvious harshness of the insult, "Professor Snape should not be teaching children of any age as he is quite horrible with them.. damaging their fragile self esteems before they have a chance to grow into trained witches and wizards."  
"Really? Is that all then?" he said looking down his extravagant nose to his open hands on the table.  
"No, the Headmaster finished in a wry voice, "He is insulting, rude, mean, nasty, tyrannical and not only takes points away from our houses without just cause but likes to hurt feelings for sadistic fun. He purposefully makes his teeth yellow or green or black with cavities as well makes his breath smell like molted oranges, he makes hair stick out of his hideous nose which he lengthens at will. He hates all girls completely. To the boys that he doesn't hate, to which there are few and they belong in Slytherin House, he acts halfway normal."  
Snape smirked, "Halfway normal, how apt of a description of me."  
"I have three questions for you, wait two, no three, yes, three questions, here they are:  
Number one, why do the girls all believe you hate them, indulge me, and DO you hate them? Why?"  
"Indulge you", Snapes said blowing air into his cheeks, "Hate is not my forum, disgust rather. Why? As you wish, girls are first silly.. they giggle at everything, then when they get older they only want the boys to pay attention to them, it's ludicrous, and finally they put whatever magic they might have into snares to land their mate. I treat the girls no differently than the boys, if they get upset.. so be it, if they cry, they cry to which I tell them they can go home to their mommies where they belong.. out of my classroom."  
"Ah.." Dumbledore nodded understandingly. He continued stroking his beard thoughtfully. "I'm looking at you right now, you have nice white non decayed teeth and while you have a long nose I don't see a hook with any .. er.. hideous hair, why are you uglifying yourself.?"  
"Protection." Snape lifted his eyebrow candidly.  
"From what?"  
"Crushes by silly girls. I protect myself by being unappealing and consequently do not have to deal with fainting half wits... ohhhhhh Professor Snape.. you're soooooo dreamy!. I protect them because I protect myself, teachers are off limits for such dead head fantasies."  
Dumbledore laughed outright startling Snape out of his chair. He didn't stop chuckling as he whipped the petition back into a small envelope and stood up. He seemed genuinely amused, "Allright Professor Snape I guess that is as good a reason as any. You don't mind if I assist you with exams today? I'll just take them along with the students as I think I will enjoy it.. really enjoy it." He stepped to the fire and turned before he stepped into it, "I do so appreciate your sense of humor!" Grinning widely he threw in some golden dust and stepped into the flames melting away.  
Snape didn't know what in hades was so funny.. making himself unattractive to the female population was brilliant - was it not? Unmystified he ran his fingers through his oily hair making it look worse than ever. He would he thought with absolute certainty, get Sasha Manasha and her two cohort friends once and for all for this.. once and for all. 


End file.
